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Ok can you talk more about your failure case then? What are the conditions like what exactly is the end result. There are 0 exchanges?

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Can you talk more about your failure case then? The classic one. Nobody wants to pay more than a token amount for Bitcoin. Maybe central banks jacked up rates or we went into a recession or something newer and shinier came about. Value crashes, miners find it more valuable to sell their equipment than keep mining or confirming transactions, the entire ecosystem compresses to where it was when it was more about tinkering. Maybe it remains somewhat relevant, as a curiosity. Our generation's Esperanto. It takes no more imagination to imagine $0.0000000001 than it does to imagine $50,000.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto?
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto? Either. Spinning up a cryptocurrency may become as mundane as creating up a database, as silly (or illegal) as trying to market a Ponzi-based hedge fund, or simply a pedagogical tool for CS students. There is nothing inherent to crypto that says it must hold value. Markets are moody.
    - chocolatebunny 9y ago
      There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value.
      - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        > There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value Yet you will find claims, on this thread, that Bitcoin becoming worthless is not possible.
        adamnemecek 9y ago
        I'm not saying it's not possible, like that the possibility is zero, all I'm saying is that it's not that much more likely that the same happening with other things. And like Bitcoin is actually resistant to some of the factors that could make other things go to zero. All I'm saying, there's a little too much "BTC will be zero, I was it in a Hollywood movie" and not enough of "BTC will go to zero if the following scenarios happened. It will go to the moon if these happened". I wont see these since these don't go with the preconceived notions and one might actually have to understand "economics of online", international relations, cryptography, networking and like so much other shit. The people who I think are qualified to write about crypto is maybe Satoshi Nakamoto but even he didn't quite nail all of it.
      - prostoalex 9y ago
        It’s not about holding, it’s about backstop. A company’s stock (or bond) is a right to get some compensation in case of dissolution, bankruptcy, or liquidation sale. A precious metal like gold still has a backstop value - it can be sold to electronics manufacturers to make those beautiful gold-plated audio cables. Diamonds have a backstop value of being used in boring and drilling. Vacated real estate can be converted to other uses. All of those assets (when owned outright and not pledged) are unlikely to go to $0.
  - twblalock 9y ago
    It applies to any kind of asset that derives 100% of its price from network effects rather than intrinsic value.
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      Ok. Would you say the same thing about Google stock? If people stop using Google tomorrow, the stock will plunge right?
      - twblalock 9y ago
        Only because the value of the underlying company would plunge as well, due to loss of revenue. But it wouldn't hit zero. Google would still have other products than search, a lot of valuable IP and patents, real estate, etc.
        adamnemecek 9y ago
        I meant google as a company. Very little of Google's value is in real estate. Do they even own all of their offices?
        cableshaft 9y ago
        I can tell you for sure that they don't. I know people in corporate real estate that won a bid to lease corporate real estate to Google recently. But that's true of almost all offices of major corporations. Very few of them own their own buildings, except maybe a headquarters here or there. They pretty much all lease.
        twblalock 9y ago
        > I meant google as a company. I'm not sure what difference this makes. As you can see here, Google has billions of assets, of which $19.7 billion are buildings.
        adamnemecek 9y ago
Joeri 9y ago
A bug is discovered allowing fraudulent creation of bitcoins, and no easy or timely fix is possible. That or governments outlaw it entirely.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  You are fundamentally arguing that cryptocurrencies, all of them, will be gone? That like 30 years from now, there will be 0 things that are basically cryptocurrencies or something that replaced them?
  - Retric 9y ago
    That's irrelevant. If every cryptocurrency around in 30 years has yet to be created then every current cryptocurrency would be dead. Consider, what happens if the Internet dies? Well you could run a private coin on an old laptop, but that's not really meaningful.
    - 20after4 9y ago
      Now that's a scary thought.
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      It's not an overnight thing. Like the transfer from Bitcoin to the new thing would be very gradual, standard technology adoption rate curve. And like, it's not clear by how much would you really diminish Bitcoin. Like crpyto became a thing but I dont think it was at the stock market.
  - teraflop 9y ago
    It's a possibility. Maybe they'll still be here, maybe they'll be totally gone; maybe they'll exist, but only in certain niches, or in a form that's unrecognizably different than what they look like now. By analogy: two decades ago, US consumers were buying almost a billion dollars' worth of photographic film a year [1]. Photography hasn't gone anywhere -- people are taking orders of magnitude more photos than they used to -- but if you had invested your entire net worth into Kodak in 2000, you'd be penniless now. [1]: http://blog.keh.com/the-evolution-of-photo-lab-life/ http://blog.keh.com/the-evolution-of-photo-lab-life/
JackFr 9y ago
No, there are 0 buyers. Doesn't matter how many exchanges.
- tankenmate 9y ago
  Indeed there will always be exchanges if there is demand.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
Robotbeat 9y ago
Someone announces they have had a large quantum computer for a while and have cracked every public key on the blockchain. That'd probably do it. Quantum Jubilee, y'all. The year of decryption, all private keys revealed, all captive coins set free. It's just a matter of engineering at this point. Give it roughly 10 years.
- nimchimpsky 9y ago
  Which is why I bought some QRL recently.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  You are right however that event is similar to idk deadly asteroid approaching earth. Sure, it might make btc go to zero but so will like so much other shit. Also quantum resistant crypto is possible.
- ejanus 9y ago
  Not only cryptography coins,even traditional banking,e-commerce,and our modern society would go down. Quantum for all.
  - bringtheaction 9y ago
    Exactly and in fact some crypto currencies claim to be working on making quantum computing resistant crypto currency. So if someone made a claim like envisioned by GP and could prove it, certain crypto currencies might do just the opposite of going to zero.
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    Yup. Quantum Jubilee is coming. But interestingly, even just the credible threat of Quantum Jubilee could have devastating effects on Bitcoin classic. Banks might be better prepared to switch over to quantum-resistant encryption since they're already centralized.
    - ric2b 9y ago
virgilp 9y ago
Let me tell you a story. My parents, before I was born, worked as teachers in Africa. They were sent via an agreement of our (communist) state with the Belgian government and were paid "expat" money. Only problem is, they knew that when they came back the government would take all their money (coerce them to exchange it at shit exchange rate, for a currency that was basically worthless). So they invested - they bought stuff. What did they buy? Well, they figured that ivory can only increase in value. So they bought ivory carvings - african art. We're sitting on a bunch of it - except for the artistic/decorative value... the monetary value is zero. Nobody touches ivory. Unless I'm willing to deal with some very shady persons and risk jailtime - I can't turn it to cash. You think it's unlikely that governments worldwide would ban any given crypto - including BTC? Just watch what happened recently in a few countries....
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Let me preface this story by saying that your parents did a shit thing and I'm glad they were duly punished. Fuck ivory. But I'm getting distracted. Bitcoin is unlike your situation as with ivory you have to have physical contact with the shady person. With BTC you don't. People online don't care as much about dealing with shady people. It's also kinda hard to tell who's a shady person online.
  - softawre 9y ago
    Bitcoin is so divisive you've managed to shit on his parents to win an argument. An argument that you then concede, saying that it doesn't matter whether BTC is legal or not because you can always sell it online. If it's illegal, doesn't it's value go way down? If you literally risk jailtime to sell it (or more accurate, to convert it to fiat eventually)
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      > Bitcoin is so divisive you've managed to shit on his parents to win an argument. Not really, I dislike the fact that he volunteers this information. Replace ivory with child pornography (ethically they aren't that different). Would you still defend op's parents? Also note, it was a side note, I didn't say it to win an argument. > If it's illegal, doesn't it's value go way down? If you literally risk jailtime to sell it (or more accurate, to convert it to fiat eventually) So like all governments at once will outlaw doing anything with crypto? Like not regulate it, even if heavily, they'll just basically make owning crypto as illegal as owning idk, child porn (pardon for the repeat analogy). Like you aren't realizing the impossibility of making something like crypto illegal.
bradleybuda 9y ago
This way: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Zimbabwe-banknotes-1-x-10-20-50-Billion-dollars-2008-series-currency/263439407032?hash=item3d563657b8:g:J0cAAOSwiIxZ-HMG https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Zimbabwe-banknotes-1-x-10-20-50-B...
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Its good that you are bringing this up. Bitcoin is entirely resistant to this, which can be demonstrated by the fact that Bitcoin is supposed to be popular in Zimbabwe.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  That particular way seems extremely unlikely, at least in the case of Bitcoin. It was specifically designed so that it should be impossible to dilute the currency like that. Nobody is supposed to be able to directly control the supply of BTC, and the rate at which new BTC is created is steadily decreasing toward zero. So going to zero in that particular way would presume that there's a vulnerability in the protocol that makes it possible to manufacture effectively unlimited bitcoin outside the normal channels, and that nobody is able to figure out a way to defend against it.
martin1975 9y ago
1) Bitcoin becomes too expensive to mine or even sustain due to energy prices 2) Bitcoin's blockchain grows to petabytes or exabytes in size thus becoming horrendously slow to both replicate or even host 3) Bitcoin is surpassed by a better technology, such as Cardano or IOTA. This won't kill it but it will stunt/cap its growth indefinitely. 4) Bitcoin fails to integrate into the legacy world fully by remaining pseudonymous, reluctant or refusing to comply with AML/KYC regulations everywhere in the world, developed or not. It then maxes out in growth. Again, not a failure case, as whatever value was there will probably still remain, but it will be dwindled down significantly. I'm sure there's more but I can't think of all of them...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  We actually kinda agree. I'm fundamentally saying that crypto wont go away.
  - martin1975 9y ago
    No legacy ever really goes away. However it slips into irrelevance unless it's built on sound foundations that can be evolved. Sad to say, no PoW currency has a sound foundation that can be expanded and evolved... like tcp/ip has been able to evolve over the last 40-50 years.
tbabb 9y ago
It absolutely boggles my mind that so many people in this thread cannot conceive of a run on crypto. I assume they probably don't even know what a "run" is. And it boggles my mind that their only conception of failure is some kind of catastrophe or monumental event, like nuclear war, or quantum computing breaking cryptography. LITERALLY ALL THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN IS THAT PEOPLE SUDDENLY WANT IT LESS. Excuse my caps. If people doubt the future of crypto, then the price goes down. If the price goes down, crypto looks less attractive, so the price goes down more. This can spiral arbitrarily close to zero. No nuclear war or quantum computers needed. What is being traded is like MMORPG game money or game items. They're only valuable as long as people want them. Crypto makes them unfakeable, but that doesn't mean people will want them. My jaw is on the floor that this is beyond so many peoples' imagination.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Not to zero. I'd personally pay $1, probably more, for even 10% of all Bitcoins, just for the novelty. If there were no miners, maybe not much more than that, and I'd want the current private keys. I'm guessing there's at least someone that'd pay a few million for all of Bitcoin, so maybe a $0.10-1.0 floor, easily? Would be illiquid and hard for small holders to sell though. Also, quantum computers do not break Bitcoin entirely as in previously unused addresses are safe. You'd need a way to quickly generate keys matching a certain hash. Otherwise you need a ton of hashing power, too, to rewrite the part of the chain created in the time a spend-of-interest was created and you generated matching keys with your attacking machine. Seems like something that can be upgraded assuming a QC-resistant crypto scheme exists.
  - ScottBurson 9y ago
    Sure, it won't go to literally zero (unlike stocks; companies can go bankrupt). But the difference between falling three orders of magnitude vs. six, say, is not a very big difference to anyone who bought in at current prices.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    But if it did go to $1, mining would become unprofitable until the next adjustment. So the only way forward is the network to fork. Then you wouldn't own "the Bitcoins", just "a Bitcoins".

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Can you talk more about your failure case then? The classic one. Nobody wants to pay more than a token amount for Bitcoin. Maybe central banks jacked up rates or we went into a recession or something newer and shinier came about. Value crashes, miners find it more valuable to sell their equipment than keep mining or confirming transactions, the entire ecosystem compresses to where it was when it was more about tinkering. Maybe it remains somewhat relevant, as a curiosity. Our generation's Esperanto. It takes no more imagination to imagine $0.0000000001 than it does to imagine $50,000.

adamnemecek 9y ago
Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto? Either. Spinning up a cryptocurrency may become as mundane as creating up a database, as silly (or illegal) as trying to market a Ponzi-based hedge fund, or simply a pedagogical tool for CS students. There is nothing inherent to crypto that says it must hold value. Markets are moody.
  - chocolatebunny 9y ago
    There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value Yet you will find claims, on this thread, that Bitcoin becoming worthless is not possible.
      - adamnemecek 9y ago
        I'm not saying it's not possible, like that the possibility is zero, all I'm saying is that it's not that much more likely that the same happening with other things. And like Bitcoin is actually resistant to some of the factors that could make other things go to zero. All I'm saying, there's a little too much "BTC will be zero, I was it in a Hollywood movie" and not enough of "BTC will go to zero if the following scenarios happened. It will go to the moon if these happened". I wont see these since these don't go with the preconceived notions and one might actually have to understand "economics of online", international relations, cryptography, networking and like so much other shit. The people who I think are qualified to write about crypto is maybe Satoshi Nakamoto but even he didn't quite nail all of it.
    - prostoalex 9y ago
      It’s not about holding, it’s about backstop. A company’s stock (or bond) is a right to get some compensation in case of dissolution, bankruptcy, or liquidation sale. A precious metal like gold still has a backstop value - it can be sold to electronics manufacturers to make those beautiful gold-plated audio cables. Diamonds have a backstop value of being used in boring and drilling. Vacated real estate can be converted to other uses. All of those assets (when owned outright and not pledged) are unlikely to go to $0.
- twblalock 9y ago
  It applies to any kind of asset that derives 100% of its price from network effects rather than intrinsic value.
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Ok. Would you say the same thing about Google stock? If people stop using Google tomorrow, the stock will plunge right?
    - twblalock 9y ago
      Only because the value of the underlying company would plunge as well, due to loss of revenue. But it wouldn't hit zero. Google would still have other products than search, a lot of valuable IP and patents, real estate, etc.
      - adamnemecek 9y ago
        I meant google as a company. Very little of Google's value is in real estate. Do they even own all of their offices?
        cableshaft 9y ago
        I can tell you for sure that they don't. I know people in corporate real estate that won a bid to lease corporate real estate to Google recently. But that's true of almost all offices of major corporations. Very few of them own their own buildings, except maybe a headquarters here or there. They pretty much all lease.
        twblalock 9y ago
        > I meant google as a company. I'm not sure what difference this makes. As you can see here, Google has billions of assets, of which $19.7 billion are buildings.
        adamnemecek 9y ago

Joeri 9y ago

A bug is discovered allowing fraudulent creation of bitcoins, and no easy or timely fix is possible. That or governments outlaw it entirely.

adamnemecek 9y ago
You are fundamentally arguing that cryptocurrencies, all of them, will be gone? That like 30 years from now, there will be 0 things that are basically cryptocurrencies or something that replaced them?
- Retric 9y ago
  That's irrelevant. If every cryptocurrency around in 30 years has yet to be created then every current cryptocurrency would be dead. Consider, what happens if the Internet dies? Well you could run a private coin on an old laptop, but that's not really meaningful.
  - 20after4 9y ago
    Now that's a scary thought.
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    It's not an overnight thing. Like the transfer from Bitcoin to the new thing would be very gradual, standard technology adoption rate curve. And like, it's not clear by how much would you really diminish Bitcoin. Like crpyto became a thing but I dont think it was at the stock market.
- teraflop 9y ago
  It's a possibility. Maybe they'll still be here, maybe they'll be totally gone; maybe they'll exist, but only in certain niches, or in a form that's unrecognizably different than what they look like now. By analogy: two decades ago, US consumers were buying almost a billion dollars' worth of photographic film a year [1]. Photography hasn't gone anywhere -- people are taking orders of magnitude more photos than they used to -- but if you had invested your entire net worth into Kodak in 2000, you'd be penniless now. [1]: http://blog.keh.com/the-evolution-of-photo-lab-life/ http://blog.keh.com/the-evolution-of-photo-lab-life/

JackFr 9y ago

No, there are 0 buyers. Doesn't matter how many exchanges.

tankenmate 9y ago
Indeed there will always be exchanges if there is demand.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

Robotbeat 9y ago

Someone announces they have had a large quantum computer for a while and have cracked every public key on the blockchain. That'd probably do it. Quantum Jubilee, y'all. The year of decryption, all private keys revealed, all captive coins set free. It's just a matter of engineering at this point. Give it roughly 10 years.

nimchimpsky 9y ago
Which is why I bought some QRL recently.
adamnemecek 9y ago
You are right however that event is similar to idk deadly asteroid approaching earth. Sure, it might make btc go to zero but so will like so much other shit. Also quantum resistant crypto is possible.
ejanus 9y ago
Not only cryptography coins,even traditional banking,e-commerce,and our modern society would go down. Quantum for all.
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  Exactly and in fact some crypto currencies claim to be working on making quantum computing resistant crypto currency. So if someone made a claim like envisioned by GP and could prove it, certain crypto currencies might do just the opposite of going to zero.
- Robotbeat 9y ago
  Yup. Quantum Jubilee is coming. But interestingly, even just the credible threat of Quantum Jubilee could have devastating effects on Bitcoin classic. Banks might be better prepared to switch over to quantum-resistant encryption since they're already centralized.
  - ric2b 9y ago

virgilp 9y ago

Let me tell you a story. My parents, before I was born, worked as teachers in Africa. They were sent via an agreement of our (communist) state with the Belgian government and were paid "expat" money. Only problem is, they knew that when they came back the government would take all their money (coerce them to exchange it at shit exchange rate, for a currency that was basically worthless). So they invested - they bought stuff. What did they buy? Well, they figured that ivory can only increase in value. So they bought ivory carvings - african art. We're sitting on a bunch of it - except for the artistic/decorative value... the monetary value is zero. Nobody touches ivory. Unless I'm willing to deal with some very shady persons and risk jailtime - I can't turn it to cash. You think it's unlikely that governments worldwide would ban any given crypto - including BTC? Just watch what happened recently in a few countries....

adamnemecek 9y ago
Let me preface this story by saying that your parents did a shit thing and I'm glad they were duly punished. Fuck ivory. But I'm getting distracted. Bitcoin is unlike your situation as with ivory you have to have physical contact with the shady person. With BTC you don't. People online don't care as much about dealing with shady people. It's also kinda hard to tell who's a shady person online.
- softawre 9y ago
  Bitcoin is so divisive you've managed to shit on his parents to win an argument. An argument that you then concede, saying that it doesn't matter whether BTC is legal or not because you can always sell it online. If it's illegal, doesn't it's value go way down? If you literally risk jailtime to sell it (or more accurate, to convert it to fiat eventually)
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    > Bitcoin is so divisive you've managed to shit on his parents to win an argument. Not really, I dislike the fact that he volunteers this information. Replace ivory with child pornography (ethically they aren't that different). Would you still defend op's parents? Also note, it was a side note, I didn't say it to win an argument. > If it's illegal, doesn't it's value go way down? If you literally risk jailtime to sell it (or more accurate, to convert it to fiat eventually) So like all governments at once will outlaw doing anything with crypto? Like not regulate it, even if heavily, they'll just basically make owning crypto as illegal as owning idk, child porn (pardon for the repeat analogy). Like you aren't realizing the impossibility of making something like crypto illegal.

bradleybuda 9y ago

This way: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Zimbabwe-banknotes-1-x-10-20-50-Billion-dollars-2008-series-currency/263439407032?hash=item3d563657b8:g:J0cAAOSwiIxZ-HMG https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Zimbabwe-banknotes-1-x-10-20-50-B...

adamnemecek 9y ago
Its good that you are bringing this up. Bitcoin is entirely resistant to this, which can be demonstrated by the fact that Bitcoin is supposed to be popular in Zimbabwe.
bunderbunder 9y ago
That particular way seems extremely unlikely, at least in the case of Bitcoin. It was specifically designed so that it should be impossible to dilute the currency like that. Nobody is supposed to be able to directly control the supply of BTC, and the rate at which new BTC is created is steadily decreasing toward zero. So going to zero in that particular way would presume that there's a vulnerability in the protocol that makes it possible to manufacture effectively unlimited bitcoin outside the normal channels, and that nobody is able to figure out a way to defend against it.

martin1975 9y ago

1) Bitcoin becomes too expensive to mine or even sustain due to energy prices 2) Bitcoin's blockchain grows to petabytes or exabytes in size thus becoming horrendously slow to both replicate or even host 3) Bitcoin is surpassed by a better technology, such as Cardano or IOTA. This won't kill it but it will stunt/cap its growth indefinitely. 4) Bitcoin fails to integrate into the legacy world fully by remaining pseudonymous, reluctant or refusing to comply with AML/KYC regulations everywhere in the world, developed or not. It then maxes out in growth. Again, not a failure case, as whatever value was there will probably still remain, but it will be dwindled down significantly. I'm sure there's more but I can't think of all of them...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
adamnemecek 9y ago
We actually kinda agree. I'm fundamentally saying that crypto wont go away.
- martin1975 9y ago
  No legacy ever really goes away. However it slips into irrelevance unless it's built on sound foundations that can be evolved. Sad to say, no PoW currency has a sound foundation that can be expanded and evolved... like tcp/ip has been able to evolve over the last 40-50 years.

tbabb 9y ago

It absolutely boggles my mind that so many people in this thread cannot conceive of a run on crypto. I assume they probably don't even know what a "run" is. And it boggles my mind that their only conception of failure is some kind of catastrophe or monumental event, like nuclear war, or quantum computing breaking cryptography. LITERALLY ALL THAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN IS THAT PEOPLE SUDDENLY WANT IT LESS. Excuse my caps. If people doubt the future of crypto, then the price goes down. If the price goes down, crypto looks less attractive, so the price goes down more. This can spiral arbitrarily close to zero. No nuclear war or quantum computers needed. What is being traded is like MMORPG game money or game items. They're only valuable as long as people want them. Crypto makes them unfakeable, but that doesn't mean people will want them. My jaw is on the floor that this is beyond so many peoples' imagination.

MichaelGG 9y ago
Not to zero. I'd personally pay $1, probably more, for even 10% of all Bitcoins, just for the novelty. If there were no miners, maybe not much more than that, and I'd want the current private keys. I'm guessing there's at least someone that'd pay a few million for all of Bitcoin, so maybe a $0.10-1.0 floor, easily? Would be illiquid and hard for small holders to sell though. Also, quantum computers do not break Bitcoin entirely as in previously unused addresses are safe. You'd need a way to quickly generate keys matching a certain hash. Otherwise you need a ton of hashing power, too, to rewrite the part of the chain created in the time a spend-of-interest was created and you generated matching keys with your attacking machine. Seems like something that can be upgraded assuming a QC-resistant crypto scheme exists.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  Sure, it won't go to literally zero (unlike stocks; companies can go bankrupt). But the difference between falling three orders of magnitude vs. six, say, is not a very big difference to anyone who bought in at current prices.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  But if it did go to $1, mining would become unprofitable until the next adjustment. So the only way forward is the network to fork. Then you wouldn't own "the Bitcoins", just "a Bitcoins".